Connections & similar people
The Connections section answers who at your firm can get you introduced. This article covers strong vs. potential connections, filling out your network, and the Similar People list.
The Connections section answers who at your firm can get you introduced. This article covers strong vs. potential connections, filling out your network, and the Similar People list.
WealthAtlas maps the relationships between people — shared boards, employers, schools, and households — and puts who in your network already knows this person at the top of their profile, above everything else. In this article we'll cover the Connections section, and then Similar People, which turns one good name into a list of them.
The walkthrough below opens on the Connections section of Eric Schmidt's profile. Strong connections come first, then potential ones. Click the +1 chip or See All to see every connection and the relationship behind it.
Strength is our read on whether a relationship is close enough to carry an introduction. Two people who sit on the same board is a strong connection; two people who once worked at the same 50,000-person company is a potential one. Strong connections appear in the blue banner, potential ones in the gray bar below it — and every connection names the tie it's based on, so you can judge it before you ask anyone for anything.
Example: a prospect just cleared your qualification bar and you're about to write the email. Check Connections first — if a client of yours sits on a board with them, that email becomes a phone call from someone they already trust.
When we don't find any, the section doesn't render at all. That usually means your network is still small, not that the person is out of reach.
Put more people into your network. Your network is whoever can credibly make an introduction for your firm — colleagues, clients, board members, the people already in your phone. Importing your LinkedIn connections takes a few minutes and fills in paths across every profile you open.
People like this person sits at the very bottom of the profile. It matches on overlapping giving, shared boards and schools, common employers, and comparable net worth — and each row shows the specific reason it surfaced, so you can throw out the ones that don't hold up.
Example: you just onboarded the best-fit client you've had in three years. Open their profile, scroll to the bottom, and work down the list of people who look like them.
Save the good matches before you leave the page. Drop them into a list so the next person who picks this up starts where you finished — see Managing lists.
The connections on a profile are only as good as the network behind them, so that's worth a read next: how your network works, and how to fill it.